The Bone Field

by Debra Bokur

  Kali chose her words carefully. “And was it just the two of them?”

  Marcia’s voice sounded confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Did they have children?”

  This time, the silence was pronounced. Finally Marcia responded. “Why, no. I mean, they talked about wanting children, but in a kind of somewhere-down-the-road kind of way. They were just kids themselves. My sister was twenty-four when she disappeared, and Reggie was just a year older. Why do you ask?”

  “If your sister had been pregnant, would she have told you?”

  Marcia’s voice faltered. “Yes . . . I mean, I think so. But maybe not. Our parents wouldn’t have approved, and it would have been difficult to keep something like that from them. Of course, Helen and I weren’t staying in touch as much as I liked after she moved to Hawai‘i, so I can’t really say for certain.”

  “And to your knowledge, was there anything worrying her? When you spoke with her, did she talk about her job with the pineapple company, or mention anything going on there that may have been troubling to her?”

  “At the plantation? Goodness, no, not that I can recall. The police asked about that as well, but honestly, she seemed to love her job, and always spoke positively about the people she worked for, and the people she worked with.”

  Next to Kali, Walter leaned over the desk and scribbled on a piece of paper. He handed it to her, and she read the hastily scrawled words: What did Reggie do?

  “You’re being very helpful, Marcia. Can you tell me anything about Reggie? What was his job?”

  “After they moved to Hawai‘i, he was working mostly as a handyman. He’d actually been an architecture student, and I think his goal was to do some kind of artistic woodworking, but for the time being he was taking small repair and renovation jobs.”

  Kali hesitated. “Do you recall either your sister or her boyfriend ever mentioning anything to you about an anchor that may have been used as something symbolic in their lives?”

  There was confused silence before Marcia spoke again, this time uncertain. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You mean, like a boat anchor?”

  “Yes, more or less. We’re trying to determine the meaning of a symbol that may be connected to your sister’s disappearance. As far as we’ve been able to determine, it’s a stylized boat anchor, roughly the size of a penny.”

  “Not offhand, but there’s no telling what she—what they—may have been connected to. I know she was always joining clubs and things. Organic gardening, holistic massage, supernatural watch groups. She was interested in everything, especially if it was offbeat or unusual. I know that Reggie shared her interests.”

  “There was a small commune on Lna‘i during the years that your sister was working for the pineapple company. It was led by a man called Abraham Waters, who marketed himself as a kind of healer. The commune was partly a church, operated out of a small farm called Eden’s River. Does that ring a bell?”

  “Not specifically,” said Marcia, slowly. “But honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. That’s exactly the type of thing that would have attracted both Helen and Reggie.”

  Kali looked at the missing-persons list. “We don’t have any contact information for Reggie’s immediate family or any extended relatives. Would you perhaps have that information?”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Marcia’s voice sounded genuinely regretful. “I have no idea.”

  Kali let the moment linger before asking her next question. “This may be a difficult request, but would you be willing to supply a DNA sample?”

  “Oh dear.” The woman’s voice was immediately distressed. “Oh dear—does that mean you found . . . something?”

  “We may have, I’m afraid. I don’t want you to be alarmed; this is simply a request to help us narrow down a few things. You understand?”

  Marcia’s voice sounded shaky. “Yes, I do understand. What can I do to help?”

  “Three things. Can you tell me what became of Helen’s belongings after she went missing? And do you have access to your sister’s dental and medical records? And lastly, is it possible you have anything closely related to her? I know it sounds odd, but something like an old hairbrush would be very useful.”

  Marcia considered the questions before responding right away. “I don’t know what happened to the things she had in Hawai‘i. They weren’t sent to me, I’m afraid—but there are some of her old things here in my house. Winter clothes she didn’t think she’d need. I’ll look through them and see if there’s anything mixed in with them.” Her voice sounded sad. “I thought eventually Helen would come home, so I kept it all here, in the closet in my spare room.”

  Next to her, Walter gave a thumbs-up. Hara sat tensely on the edge of his chair.

  Kali tried not to sound elated. “That would be enormously helpful. If you could get back to me, we can go from there. We can also give you instructions on how to provide a DNA sample. Our colleagues in Reno will help you with that, and send the results to us here in Maui.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Thank you for your help, Miss Woolsey. I assure you we’re all very grateful. I’m going to pass you to Officer David Hara now. He’ll explain to you how to reach us.”

  She passed her phone to Hara, and she and Walter moved to the far side of the room.

  “I’ll call Reno about the sample, and have Hara see what he can find out about Reggie McCartney while we’re waiting for them to get back to us,” said Walter.

  “Got it. I’ll track down whoever’s living in the place that’s listed as their last address,” said Kali. “The landlord may have cleaned out the place and thrown away everything left behind by Helen and Reggie,” she continued, “but we may get lucky and find out they stashed a box of their belongings somewhere.”

  “Some luck would be welcome,” agreed Walter. “As long as it’s the good kind.”

  Finishing up the phone call, Hara moved to the printer. He was replacing the standard copy paper with a heavy-duty laser photo paper. Kali watched from the corner of her eye as he went back to his computer and typed rapidly on the keyboard. The printer hummed to life. Hara walked toward them and thrust the newly printed pages into Walter’s hands. “Photos of Matthew Greene, Helen Stafford, and Reggie McCartney,” he said. “Last known driver’s licenses, plus what we had in the records from the original missing-persons report.”

  Kali stood close to Walter, eyeing the photos curiously. Matthew Greene had a narrow face and brown hair parted on the side. He wasn’t smiling for the camera. She set his image aside. The other photos showed a slender young woman with long, light-colored hair and a happy smile beneath a nose and cheeks sprinkled with freckles. Reggie McCartney was stocky, with dark, curling hair that reached well past his shoulders. To Kali, both people looked friendly and uncomplicated, faces that would have blended in easily to any group of tourists or young people gathered at a bar or beachside café. Besides the driver’s license photos, there was another one showing Helen and Reggie together, seated side by side, shoulders touching. Each was wearing a plastic flower lei. They were standing in front of the arrivals hall at the airport in Honolulu, a stack of suitcases on the sidewalk next to them. Kali wondered if they’d asked a taxi driver to snap the image, overcome with excitement to be in Hawai‘i.

  “Here, you take these,” Walter said to her, handing her the photos. “Good job, Hara.”

  Hara nodded. Kali could tell that he was pleased. She smiled. “Can you help me tape up these photos?”

  Hara looked at the available wall space. “Maybe we could put up one of those crime scene whiteboards you see in all the television shows so we can spread out our information.”

  Walter lifted his brow. “Yeah. Like on Kali’s favorite police show, Lights Out Maui. And then we can put up another one for every one of the other cases we’re working on. We’ll need to add on a few rooms pretty quick.”

  Kali looked thoughtful. “Ignoring the Chad Caesar reference, I would like t
o spread these images out,” she said, looking around. At the end of the room, against the wall facing the outside of the building, a metal table was being used as a repository for miscellaneous books, papers, and stacks of nonessential folders. She walked toward the table and surveyed the surface accumulation. “Let’s find somewhere else for all of this, at least temporarily,” she said. “Hara, feel like giving me a hand?”

  He joined her, making no attempt to disguise his eagerness. “I’ll go and get a few of those big plastic bins from the storage room,” he said, then hurried toward the door.

  “Don’t get too busy organizing, please. Remember that I need you later for rooster fights,” said Walter as he watched Hara’s retreating back. “I’ve got a hot date with a local champion tonight, though he doesn’t know it yet.”

  “What’s up?” Kali asked as she began to sort through the papers on the table.

  Walter reached forward, gathering up a stack of safety flyers intended for presentations at local schools. “Remember I told you about Bitty and Johnny Benga, the sister and brother we had in custody?”

  “Had? As in past tense?”

  “Couldn’t hold them any longer,” said Walter, his voice patient, restrained. “They have a lawyer working the native rights angle.”

  “Benga,” repeated Kali. “I don’t remember you mentioning their name before. Isn’t that Samoan?”

  “I think so, yeah. But because their families have been here long enough to be landowners, they’re regarded as native Hawaiians, with all of the rights that go along with that. Their lawyer is arguing that cock fighting is a traditional sport and they have a legal right to practice it.”

  “Explain that to the roosters.”

  “Oh, right. Those cuddly, eye-gouging, flesh-ripping sons of dinosaurs?”

  Kali shrugged. “Still kind of brutal, in my opinion. Especially when the birds get fitted out with those gruesome metal spurs. That’s straight out of a horror movie.”

  “All I know is that organized cock fighting is breaking the law.” His phone buzzed, and he put down the flyers and glanced at the phone screen before he answered the call. He held it up so Kali could see Chief Pait’s name on the display.

  “Hello, Chief,” he said. Then he frowned, nodding as he listened. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, got it, but I think Detective Mhoe . . . Right, understood.”

  He ended the call and looked at Kali. “Guess who’s a featured podcast guest on Chad Caesar’s show this afternoon?”

  She backed away a few steps, eyes widening. “No. Absolutely not. There is no possible way I am—”

  “Relax!” said Walter, laughing. “It’s me. The chief wants me to appeal to the public. Guess I just have that special little something.”

  “Yeah. You can keep a handle on your temper in Chad’s company, and I can’t.”

  “True dat,” said Walter, still grinning. He looked around, gradually giving way to a weary expression. “Not that I’m looking forward to it either. For the moment, I’ll have to leave the paper sorting up to you and Hara.” He sighed and reached into his pocket, jiggling his car keys. “Feel free to call and interrupt at any time if you find anything here that we need to move on. Other than that, I’ll see you this evening. Wear shoes you can run in.”

  Kali watched as he left, consumed with relief that it was Walter and not her who had to answer Chad’s questions. She picked up an armful of paper files and walked into the hallway and down a few doors to the building’s single supply room. It took several trips back and forth until the table was cleared. She left Hara in the storage area to organize the papers and flyers into separate plastic bins.

  She stood in front of the table in the main station room, holding Manuel Raso’s photo album. She placed it on the table and turned the pages, removing a selection of photos and making a small pile. One by one, she spread them out on the surface, clustering those of Helen and Reggie in one corner, and placing the photo of Matthew Greene on the far side. She added the crime scene photos showing the bodies and their graves, and placed a gridded map of Lna‘i in the center, already marked with the exact location of each discovery. As she stood staring at the display, Hara joined her, looking thoughtfully at the materials that she’d set out.

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  “Now we connect the dots,” said Kali, her mind already leaping between the past and the present, and all the places where monsters were likely to hide.

  CHAPTER 19

  Walter was clearly uncomfortable. He adjusted the bulky headset covering his ears, tugged at the collar of his police uniform, and glanced self-consciously toward a camera set on a tripod across from the table where he sat facing Chad Caesar. On Walter’s left, close by, a smiling young woman was making a last adjustment to the camera angle.

  The heavy wood table that separated Walter from Chad was an oval covered by a thick, polished slab of dark marble. A glass shaped like a goblet, filled with water, had been placed in front of Walter’s chair, while an identical glass rested on the table in front of Chad. The wall to Walter’s right, also visible to the camera, was covered from floor to ceiling with colorful artwork. He recognized it as the work of a popular, up-and-coming Hawaiian graffiti artist whose art had been featured on the sides of buildings in O‘ahu. The bright backdrop was a swirling mélange of shapes and colors that surrounded a central cartoonish version of the famous Chiaramonti bust of Julius Caesar. Instead of Caesar’s face, a stylized likeness of Chad peered into the room. Running horizontally beneath the portrait was a banner that had been painted to make it look as though the letters were etched from stone, bearing the words I AM THE RULER OF THE NEWS in a Romanesque font.

  Walter reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a square of white paper. He unfolded it and placed it on the table in front of him, next to his phone. The young woman finished fiddling with the camera equipment and smiled encouragingly at Walter, then gave Chad a thumbs-up. She counted down from three on her fingers, and then mouthed the word “Live.” Adjusting the microphone in front of him, Chad faced the camera, a huge smile on his face.

  “Greetings, friends and followers! I’m both delighted and excited to tell you that joining me today is Captain Walter Alaka’i of the Maui Police Department.” He briefly flashed his smile at Walter, then grew serious. “We’re here, of course, to discuss the alarming news that there’s a serial killer loose in the vicinity.”

  Walter twisted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. He glanced toward the camera, then back to Chad. “We’re live, right? People can hear us now?”

  Chad smiled patiently. “Yes, Captain, we’re live. Viewers throughout the world have tuned in today, breathlessly anticipating what you have to share about the latest threat to our gentle life in Hawai‘i.”

  Walter’s look was skeptical. “I’m not sure that you and I are living in the same Hawai‘i. And to our knowledge, there is no immediate threat.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Chad’s response was quick, his voice taking on a tone of urgency. He leaned slightly over the table toward Walter, pushing the microphone forward so that it stayed in line with his mouth. “Dozens of bodies, all . . .”

  “That’s incorrect. We . . .” Walter’s voice faded.

  Chad gestured. “You have to keep the microphone close to your mouth, Captain. Speak directly into it.”

  Walter pulled the microphone closer. “I can tell you,” he said, over-enunciating the first few words, “that we have uncovered several individuals—not dozens—who we believe were left abandoned in an unused field on one of the old Lna‘i pineapple plantations some time ago, perhaps as long ago as twenty-five years.”

  “Absolutely terrifying!” Chad responded, the timbre of his voice growing dramatically deep.

  Walter frowned. “Well,” he began, but Chad interrupted.

  “To think that all this time, a murderer has been walking among us,” Chad said gravely. “Maybe the person standing in front of you at the grocery store. Perhaps s
omeone you’ve sat beside in a movie theater!”

  Walter tilted his head, searching Chad’s face, trying to find any shred of genuine concern among the theater. “First of all, I should point out that there’s a difference between murder and homicide. And whoever it was who committed these crimes may no longer be alive, or even be in Hawai‘i,” he said. “We have no way to tell at this time. That’s why we’d like to appeal to the public for some help.”

  “I assure you, Captain, that my loyal—and highly intelligent—audience would love to help the Maui Police Department solve this mystery. Everyone is worried. We’re all locking our doors at night.”

  “Well,” said Walter, a slight frown on his face, “locking your doors at night is a pretty sensible thing to do in general.”

  “But this is our tropical utopia! Trust and love abound. No one wants to have to look over their shoulder, or put bars on their windows.”

  Walter sighed. “Statistically,” he began, but again Chad cut him off.

  “What can you tell us about the investigation?”

  Walter took a deep breath. “We are doing everything within our power to identify the deceased and locate the person or persons responsible.”

  “How can we help, Captain? As you no doubt already know, I played an investigative journalist on Lights Out Maui and am deeply familiar with formal investigative procedures. I’m a professional, just like yourself. Tell us what we can do.”

  Walter waited. It was clear from his expression that he would have liked to comment on Chad’s claims, that he was struggling to ignore that part of the discussion. “There are several things that would be helpful,” he finally said. “First, anyone having any information about any adult males going missing from 1997 to 2000, or information related directly to persons by the name of Helen Stafford and Reggie McCartney, are asked to get in touch with us on a special hotline we’ve established.” He reached forward, where the piece of white paper he’d brought rested facedown on the table’s surface. He held it up for the camera. It was an image of the anchor charm, the outlines emphasized in heavy black ink. “Next, anyone with information about this symbol is likewise asked to get in touch with us.”